BEHIND THE FALLING NUMBERS

The wingnuts take some enjoyment from observing that the main stream media, what Fats Limbaugh calls the drive by media, are much less popular. The strong implication is that people are fed up with the liberal slant of the MSM. I found a study by Pew which indicates the issue is a little more complicated.

Here's a table that shows how many people find the respective sources believable:

News Source Believability
1998-2006

	Newspaper	WSJ	USA Today	AP	CNN	Fox	Local TV	NPR
1998	29	41	23	18	42	0	34	19
2000	25	41	23	21	39	26	33	25
2004	19	24	19	18	32	25	25	23
2006	19	26	18	17	28	25	23	22

The chart makes it a little easier to comprehend:





The wingnut claim that people are turning away from liberal bias can't account for the decline in the believability of the Wall Street Journal. In addition, NPR doesn't seem to have undergone a significant decline, something one would expect because the wingnuts do claim that NPR is liberal.